


Embracing Dusk

by Corehealer



Series: EmetWoL Event - Valentione's Week 2021 [6]
Category: Ascian - Fandom, Final Fantasy XIV, Shadowbringers - Fandom
Genre: Best Friends, Distance, F/M, Kindness, Love, Memory, Memory Loss, Memory Magic, Ocean, Other, Reconciliation, Regret, Unrequited Love, Wine, glamour, perseverance, sun - Freeform, sunset
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-18
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-14 12:34:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29542434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Corehealer/pseuds/Corehealer
Summary: Entry Eight in the EmetWoL Valentione's Week event. For this Valentione's Day prompt, Sunset, a sunset shared and a little bit of content with Elidibus, the Emissary.Sarah dreams of a sunset shared in Emet-Selch's company, back when she was Persephone, when they both visited a city not far from Amaurot on business with Elidibus. She awakens to find all her loved ones are nearby except for Elidibus, and goes searching for him. When she finds him, they talk about her dream and share a moment of memory together. And a drink.This piece is another little snippet of Eli/WoL, as it exists for my WoL, in the context of her relationship with Emet-Selch.
Relationships: Azem/Emet-Selch (Final Fantasy XIV), Elidibus (Final Fantasy XIV)/Original Character(s), Elidibus/Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), Emet-Selch (Final Fantasy XIV)/Original Character(s), Emet-Selch/Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV)
Series: EmetWoL Event - Valentione's Week 2021 [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2155329
Kudos: 5





	Embracing Dusk

_‘In the morning, the sun rises high in the sky. Rises with her namesake, parting from him. Making sure not to disturb his rest._

_At midday, she is towering and proud above all. Humble in service, yet filled with the ego of her place in the world. To rise high, and yet seek greater heights among the stars._

_In the afternoon, she dips her eyes, one foot in front of the other. Walking, wandering, always traveling. Never content to remain in the same place for long. Always more places to see, and people to greet. Faces to kiss with golden light._

_In the evening, she drapes herself in his colours. Clings close to her robes, shepherding her nerves to calmer shores, full of excitement but needing to focus. The silhouette of home just on the horizon._

_At dusk, she descends into his embrace. Drowns in it. Is consumed by it with a smile. Going to dwell in his world, and in their perfect realm. The city of dreamers. A dreaming city beyond the sea._

_At night, she is his again. He paints her soul and ensures she never forgets. Every touch. Every stroke. Every note and coaxed promise. Always to abide in one another, no matter where life takes them._

_Every single day._

_And at starlight’s end, they stand at the far edge of fate, and remember.’_

***

She couldn’t quite place the year, or remember the name of the city they visited in Elidibus’ company that day. All she could clearly recall was the sun.

The three of them had come there, to that now nameless place, on some business of his, at the request of the locals. To oversee various rites for the coming year. To bear well wishes from Amaurot, and gifts from around the world. And to look over the departed in the Underworld and pass on these things to them, as well as to the living.

It was the time when the sun was setting along the horizon. They were on a beach, not far from the city’s edge and the piers of its harbour. A place not terribly far from home, but with a more welcoming seaside vista. Salt and sea spray. The taste of the ocean in the air. Foaming white waves and the cry of seagulls. She could see it all vividly.

And the golden orange sky. Clouds parting. Her namesake. Still such a strange thing to think, that this bright orb should be so important to her now. Bound to her in truth, as ever the Star was to this mother of life before her in complex orbital dance.

A dance far older than even the long lived peoples of the Star. One which had been old when their world was young, and would be here rambling on when they were all dust or long departed.

“ _You have that look on your face again, my dear. It ill suits your beautiful features_.”

Hades was to her right, looking up at the same sight, each still wearing their hoods up and their masks of office. Fresh from some business at the harbour, where they had been shown some of the boats the people of this city were constructing to make travel of the conventional sort easier between here and Amaurot. Sleek vessels of wood and other, more exotic materials that, in later eras, no longer existed.

She reached into the concealed pocket of her communal robe, digging around for another now familiar friend. Close to her heart.

She held it out to him now. An orange crystal, with a white circle surrounded by a larger white circle. The orbital dance she now embraced in her soul.

“No matter how many times I look at this thing, and look up there at the sun, I never really get used to the feeling. Its been years since I was Ascended and yet, it still feels like it was only yesterday.”

She closed her fingers around it in her hand, running her thumb over the soft surface gently. It was warm to the touch.

“A beam of light cleaving through me... how did our ancestors conceive of such things as all of this?”

He shook his head, smiling at her.

“ _A question you would need to put to them, my dear, though they are farther back in time than even our dear city. Their motivation for beginning this great work is as much a mystery to our time as surely our lives would seem to them. As wonderous and strange things, full of fascination as they are_.”

He placed his hand atop her own, and squeezed gently.

“ _I remember that day too, like it was yesterday. Both your own Ascension, when my heart leaped to see the change take shape in your soul, and the day of my own more distant Ascension, when I became one with the stream of life_.”

He reached into a pocket of his own robe, not too dissimilar in placement to her own. His purple crystal of office bearing the sigil of the twins stars, a constellation of duality. Life and death. He placed it next to her own in her hand before returning his grasp to hers.

“ _Azem has always been a force to stand apart among the Convocation, by necessity and circumstance. Equal and cherished as all Fourteen are, but often distant from the stars it shepherds. Binding them to the world as a whole, just as home binds the sun in turn_.”

His other hand, gracing her cheek affectionately, from under gloved hands.

“ _Did you know, my dear, that your role and mine have often been bound together in love in the past_?”

“Some corny cosmic coincidence, like as not.”

They laughed, as she came to nuzzle into his shoulder and sighed.

“Yes, I am well aware that previous Azems and Emet-Selchs were married or otherwise regarded one another highly. In service and in love. I blame your role’s preoccupation with dueling aspects.”

“ _Always seeking synthesis and equilibrium; not terribly different in that sense from Elidibus and his role either_.”

“Speaking of, where has that young man gotten off to? He was supposed to meet us here a half a bell ago.”

“ _Probably finalizing some manner of cultural exchange, or a trade deal. He’ll be along soon enough. I’m happy to linger here with you_.”

She nodded, and they fell into a silent regard for the sun, still setting before them across the water.

***

She awoke, as the sun hit the water’s edge. The scent of salt air still fresh in her nose as she rose her head slowly from the pillow.

Everyone had fallen asleep in her living room in a circle, around the table. Luciane and G’raha and Y’shtola were across from her in various spots nearby, snoozing. Leaned up against chair arms or on piles of books.

She herself was laid up next to him, her head propped up by his shoulders and with his arms around her. She gently moved them to rest on his chest, and rose from her spot on the couch. After moving about the room quietly for a few moments in the dim light coming in from the windows, she noticed someone was missing.

Where was Elidibus?

She somehow had a sense, immediately, where he might be, and motioned towards the front door of her recreated apartment to see if she could locate him.

***

He was there, on the roof. Standing still as a board, arms to his sides. Still in Ardbert’s body and decked in his white robes, but with hood down and mask to one side in his left hand. He was staring out over the vastness of the city before them.

She walked over from the door to the roof and came to rest next to him.

“Up a little late, aren’t we?”

“As are you, Azem. Aren’t you more of a morning person?”

“Not anymore. Not really. Not in this life, anyways.”

He said nothing to this, continuing to stare.

“So... how are you feeling lately?”

“I am well enough, given the circumstances. Worried about the Source, and the future, and a great deal else.”

“Understandable.”

“The weight of my duties is beyond your comprehension, as ever it was.”

She furrowed her eyes at him. Of all of her companions here in the city, consigned by recent events to find themselves stuck here together, Elidibus was proving to be the most distant and intractable. Even to her, a woman she was now given to understand he had loved and looked up to, in the distant past.

She forgave him a great deal lately, especially after what had happened at the Tower. He had to put up with both her and G’raha with that memory fresh in his mind. But she still wanted to cut through his abrasiveness and see if she could coax a bit more of the admirable young man she had once known and cherished as a friend back up to the fore.

After a few moments of silence, she had an idea, borne from this most recent memory she’d experienced in sleep.

“Elidibus?”

“Yes, Azem?”

“Do you remember the sunset?”

He blinked, and turned his head to her.

“I... don’t know that I follow, exactly. What do you mean, Persephone?”

He still insisted on using her ancient name and title more often than her current ones. She actually appreciated it a bit, especially in this moment of recollection.

“In the city... the one across the strait from Amaurot... with the boats?”

“Hmm... I cannot say that I recall what it is you speak of.”

She put a hand to her chin. Uncertain of how to overcome this barrier when she herself recalled little more of the context than that. Only the sun was clear to her memory.

The sun.

Wait...

“Perhaps... perhaps if I showed you, you would remember?”

He paused, and gave her a confused look.

“Perhaps... but I doubt you possess the means to do so as you are now.”

She smiled a bit at him. She’d been meaning to test her theory, that she’d picked up enough of that particular trick from Hades to do it justice. Now seemed the opportune time.

“I guess I’ll just have to keep trying to prove myself to you, then. And what better way than with the mother of my office?”

He stared at her, a bit bemused at how she had spoken of the sun in the same manner he recalled her doing in ancient days.

She snapped her fingers.

On that day. With the sun setting in the west.

She snapped her fingers again.

Now setting itself in the sky before him... golden orange, with green light crisscrossed with red in kaleidoscope patterns in the lens flare now gracing the top of one of the higher spires of the city before them.

She snapped her fingers a third time, and made a sweeping gesture.

In the span of a single second, the sun aligned itself from east to west, across the sky, making a brief day come and go before holding itself firmly in that space near the horizon’s edge, just above the city buildings, before them. It seemed a little static and jerky in movement at first, but then settled into light and colour as it was that day long ago, albeit without the sea.

She turned and grinned at him as he looked up at the sun.

“Is that enough means for you?”

He stood and drank in this sight, and the rapid shift from night’s embrace to dusk and sun’s descent. Eyes adjusting to the changing light.

He closed his eyes to blink.

***

“ _Ah, there you are. We were wondering when you would arrive to greet us, esteemed Elidibus_.”

“Didn’t get too overburdened with all the glad handing I hope?”

“Not at all, Azem. Not moreso than usual in any case. I came as soon as I could. And I come bearing a gift of theirs for us.”

The Emissary carried a bottle of wine and three wine glasses in his hands, carefully cupped to his body via his arms so as not to break them. He presented a glass each to his companions.

“They have a lovely vineyard to the east of the city. They insisted that we try their latest vintage, and get the seal of the approval of the Convocation on the spice blend used.”

“I won’t say no to free wine!”

Hades rolled his eyes at her.

“ _Just be sure not to overindulge this time, my dear. I would rather hate to have to impose on the good Emissary to assist me in carrying you back to our boat and back across the strait to Amaurot all by ourselves_.”

“And here I was thinking you both enjoyed carrying me around all over creation! Learn to lighten up and live a little, esteemed Emet-Selch.”

Elidibus blushed a bit under his mask as the two of them began to trade lighthearted barbs at one another, talking like the old married couple they were swiftly becoming. He filled their glasses each half full, and rose his glass for a toast, breaking up their tussle and returning them to his presence.

“A toast... to my dearest colleagues, and dearest friends.”

Persephone smiled and nodded a few times at him, eyes shining bright under her mask.

“A lovely sentiment I’ll be happy to drink to anytime, my friend.”

She downed her glass in one go and then quickly embraced him, nearly knocking him over and spilling his drink. Hades sighed, shaking his head again but smiling now too.

“ _I don’t know how the poor man can stand the way you treat him_.”

“He knows he loves it. Especially when we go on our travels together on shared business. Keeps him on his toes. Right Eli?”

“Of course. Your wife always keeps my travels to the other cities around the Star exciting. I don’t know what I would do without her efforts to lay good groundwork for my own tasks with her pleasant company, and heartfelt efforts among the citizens of those other places on Amaurot’s behalf.”

He beamed at her, returning her hug in earnest, wine glasses clinking a bit as they held one another.

“She is invaluable to me as both a peer and a friend. As are you, Emet-Selch. I am grateful for the chance to serve alongside you both, especially in moments like these.”

“ _Likewise, my friend. May we continue to do so together for many years to come_.”

The two of them chuckled and turned back to Hades, raising their refilled glasses for another toast, before drinking some more and chatting for a while longer. All the while in the background, the sun continued to set.

***

A solidary tear left his eyes as he continued to watch the sun slowly set on the horizon, paying little attention to the manner in which Sarah ever so gently gestured for it to lower with her hands. She still needed to guide it manually, having little reckoning as yet of how Hades had managed to make his glamours animate and retain a believable passage of time.

The look on his face now, though, was worth the extra effort, and she continued to silently allow him this moment and move the sun gently down below the city’s edge until it was gone.

When night had returned to how it had been, she relented her exertion with a small bit of panting, and looked over to see he was now looking back in her direction.

“Thank you.”

“You are most welcome, my dear friend.”

She hugged him, and let a few tears of her own flow out.

“I know. That you care. And that is enough for now. I promise I won’t give up on you, even with our disagreements. Just like I never gave up on him.”

He did not respond, only stood and allowed her to hug him for a while. The silence only broken when there was a sound behind them of a door opening and closing.

“ _I was wondering why the sun had come flying by our window whilst we slept, waking me with its light, only to find she’d fled my arms and found his instead_.”

“She came of her own volition, Emet-Selch. Intent on imparting cherished memories, as you do.”

He turned, smiling at him, with his mask back on his face to cover his watering eyes.

“And I am grateful for it. Truly.”

Hades approached them, beaming. He hadn’t seen his old friend smile like this in... it must have been many eras at least. Not many reasons to smile when one is an Ascian, after all. Not even upon a successful Rejoining. And now she had managed to draw some small spark of him out of hiding again, with a bit of his own tricks.

“ _However did you manage this, Sarah? I know you and Luciane were quite insistent in your desire to learn, but I had imagined glamours on this scale remained beyond you in your current stat_ e.”

“Like with most things past and present, I’m something of a quick study. Your show the other night at the Anyder gave me a lot of what I needed to figure it out.”

“ _And here I was thinking you were too distracted by all the shiny baubles in the sky. Colour me impressed, hero_.”

She scoffed at him, and drew him in suddenly for a group hug, dragging Elidibus from his fixed position and bringing these two stars from her sky together.

“I love you two so much.”

“ _For the love of Zodiark, ease up on the squeezing! I may be an Ascian, but I still need to breathe_!”

She laughed, and after a moment let them loose, turning to Elidibus.

“Try to smile like that more often for me, Elidibus. Alright? I missed seeing it.”

He stared at her again for a few moments, and then nodded.

“I will endeavour to do so, Azem. In this at least, we can find common cause to appreciate one another once more.”

“Good.”

She planted a kiss on his cheek, making his cheeks become a bit pink, not unlike how they had been when they were drinking wine on that beach, long ago.

“ _You could charm the horns off a dragon, my dear, make no mistake_.”

“Give me more time and I’ll charm a lot more out of you both.”

“ _You would have made a fine empress in Garlemald too, for all that sweet syrup that spills out of your heart. Made it less of a dreary assignment for me, in any case_.”

“Oh, is it too late to be your queen? I was under the impression you already held all of those qualifications yourself.”

They both laughed, trading sarcastic barbs at one another in the manner of the old couple they had become again. Elidibus stood there and felt like he was still shifting between that beach and this roof, watching their forms change with each blink of his eyes, even with the sun gone again. Or at least, the bright one in the sky.

He shrugged, and moved in to hug them, to break up their little back and forth.

“Never change, my friends.”

“ _It is sadly a little late for that, but worry not, esteemed Emissary. We’ll be sure to carry you back down to the apartment ourselves if all that emotion roiling around in your bosom gets to be too much_.”

She patted him on the back.

“Speaking of, we should get back down there. Won’t be long before morning. We can surprise the others with breakfast.”

An exchange of nods.

“You two go on ahead. I have some more thinking to do before I return anon.”

He waved them off, mimicking the form of formal dismissal the Convocation used among themselves during meetings.

“ _Very well, but do try not to brood overlong up here. Your face will freeze that way, Emissary_.”

“I will take that under advisement, Emet-Selch. Now go.”

He turned and placed his arms back around his back, staring at the sky. He was back to a colder demeanor. They wondered if he even remembered half of what had just occurred, but desiring not to pry or disturb him any longer, departed with silent smiles. Content that they had at least managed to pierce the veil a little.

They departed, and closed the door softly behind them.

**Author's Note:**

> As is the case with my formal series shipping Emet-Selch with my Warrior of Light (which this is a seasonal event extension of), I italicize Emet's speech here out of respect and admiration for him and to add definition to his words when he speaks in a scene. Just for clarification.
> 
> Sarah's relationship with Elidibus is a troubled one, most specifically because, in the past, Persephone had little real sense of how Elidibus gradually came to care for her as more than a friend. When Persephone tied her fate to Hades, it was around the time she first met Elidibus in the context of her then new role among the Convocation. As coworkers, they often had reason to go out into the world on dual journeys, traveling together to distant cities to fulfill their roles in each other's company. 
> 
> It was these interactions that helped him at first become friends with her and look up to her and her actions, to respect her drive to work independently and solve problems for others in a selfless manner. He eventually came to love her, but given her relationship with Hades, he assumed it would be improper, and would never be reciprocated, so he kept it to himself. When Ariadne entered her life, he became jealous that another had managed to accomplish what he wanted, albeit in a roundabout way given her own unorthodox circumstances.
> 
> The events of the Final Days cemented a bitterness in his heart regarding her, something that was only hardened with time and the Sundering. Sarah has a bit of an uphill battle if she wants to overcome it and reclaim a friendship or anything else with this man she seeks to win over again, for more reasons than one. Chief among them putting an end to his desire for the Ardor. She and Hades now both seek to try and help him recover memories he has lost in much the same manner as they do with her other loved ones.


End file.
